Taking this away from the thread about France becoming a right-wing country with spiralling dept (soon to be controlled?) Here are 2 links about the centi-millionaires leaving.
The ‘estate agent’ post that’s being quoted by many:
And another that’s considering things from a more grounded perspective:
TBH at the present rate I don’t expect Labour to bother the really wealthy very much, rather to extract the needed finances from ordinary people in the middle. We will therefore not see a massed exodus of the super-rich caused by taxation, though we may see one if infrastructure breaks down sufficiently to make life more uncomfy than the hassle and expense of relocating.
Don’t imagine the super-rich would even notice that unless the infrastructure broke down to S African levels of metropolitan malfunction that affect both rich and poor, such as continual electricity outages, water shortages etc.
I suspect that where the billionaires live and where they keep their money are two different things.
And given that most business leaders were opposed to Brexit, that probably has as much to do with them leaving as any potential Labour taxes, which they would have already put measures in place to mitigate in any case.
I note that even some pro-Brexit billionaires such as Sir James Dyson moved their headquarters elsewhere once it became clear that May and Johnson had cocked things up.
Interesting that Dyson (an RCA alumnus) has kept his R&D in the UK despite taking the rest of his company elsewhere. He also continues to make generous endowments to his alma mater, which despite being the world leader in its class of specialist post-grad university, hasn’t received any UK government funding since 2012.
That’s as maybe - but how many jobs are involved in R&D - not as many as in manufacturing I would suspect.
I still have no time for people who talked up Brexit as being a huge opportunity for British businesses and the country as a whole, yet have since voted with their feet instead of staying here and demonstrating why it was such a “good idea”.
People like Dyson are either hypocrites or fools. Or perhaps like Farrago and many others in the UK financial markets they made enough money shorting the pound on Referendum Day so they could afford to leave?
“Rats” and “Fat Cats”? Sounds like the usual British Left politics of envy.
I don’t care how rich someone is or how they earned their money as long as it wasn’t through ripping off the general public or the taxpayer.
Of course, HMG will never get to squeeze the rich as all the usual money friendly countries rolled out the red carpets some time ago. HMG will be targeting those can’t just up and sod off to sunnier climes.
Expect property and inheritance tax thresholds to drop to the point anyone with more that a 1 bed flat in Middlesbrough is getting bent over the barrel.
I wasn’t defending Dyson; more pointing out that he made reasonable pragmatic, entrepreneurial capitalist decisions . Obviously it would make economic sense to relocate manufacturing to SE Asia, but I found it interesting that he chose to keep R&D in the UK and presumably feels that’s where the country’s future prosperity lies - just a shame that successive governments keep cutting funding to the subjects that will help maintain that situation.
Fifty odd years ago, when I was studying ‘A’ level Economics (not just an arty dilettante) Switzerland was the dominant example of a small country that had achieved a high standard of living through ‘high quality added value’ (not just cuckoo clocks). The UK’s future economic prosperity shouldn’t lie with people putting hoovers together (sorry JD).
Would that include his lobbying to screw up our trading relationship with our nearest neighbours?
Edited to add: I know the answer is yes because he probably assumed there would be a bonfire of regulations and he would benefit from lowering standards.